In the stories, the gun owners are calm, cool, and collected, in the midst of dangerous situations they are able to de-escalate through the display of a potentially lethal weapon. They are almost entirely unlike any actual humans I have ever known, and their stories are written with all the subtlety you might expect from a propaganda campaign. These young Responsible Gun Owners would almost convince you that the world would be a safer place if all children were armed.

Almost. Until you put down the fairy tale book and pick up the newspaper. Or, for some of us, think about personal experience. My parents taught marksmanship, so we had rifles when we were young. Looking back, despite NRA approved gun safety lessons, we did enough stupid stuff with guns that we were probably lucky to have grown up at all. Well, my best friend in 5th grade didn’t actually make it to adulthood. When it came time for my parents to distribute the guns to my generation, none of us wanted them. So some are now in a museum, and the rest have been destroyed.